Medical procedures such as endoscopy (e.g., bronchoscopy) may involve the insertion of a medical tool into a patient's luminal network (e.g., airways) for diagnostic and/or therapeutic purposes. Surgical robotic systems may be used to control the insertion and/or manipulation of the medical tool during a medical procedure. The surgical robotic system may comprise at least one robotic arm including a manipulator assembly which may be used to control the positioning of the medical tool prior to and during the medical procedure. The surgical robotic system may further comprise location sensor(s) configured to generate location data indicative of a position of the distal end of the medical tool with respect to a location sensor coordinate system.
The surgical robotic system may further utilize a model of a luminal network of a patient, which may be defined with respect to a model coordinate system. The location sensor coordinate system may not be registered to the model coordinate system, and thus the system may perform a process to achieve registration between the location sensor coordinate system and the model coordinate system such that location data received from the location sensor(s) can be used to determine the position of the distal end of the medical tool with respect to the model.